Lost my best Friend/Love/Soul mate - Somewhat Complicated

[Gwenivere]

5 hours ago, kayc said:

  Hindsight does alter decision making, but that's not a privilege we're afforded.

Excelllent point, Kay.  If only, but not possible.

[Finch]

I have come to terms with realising I could not have altered her death. Well, mostly. I do still have irrational thoughts on that.

I really struggle though to come to terms with not being there for her during that last week. Even though we never physically met and her family didn't know me, I think somehow I should have hopped on a plane and just been there for her. I know it's not realistic I could have flown over and barged into the house. Apart from anything, it would have probably caused alot of upset to her family and in a different reality I may be typing here right now about how I regret having done so and making her last days even more distressing. Who's to say they would have even let me in to see her. Maybe they would have called the police. Would she have even realised it was me? So many what ifs.

I just can't deal with the fact that she may have wanted me there, in those semi-lucid final days, when she could no longer physically contact me. When all the while I was here trying to find out what was even going on, via her friend on facebook, while also having to tread carefully about what I said in case I said too much, while also desperately hoping things would turn around. 

Is there any use me talking about this?

I cannot come to terms with this.

[Widowedbysuicide]

Finch I think you are working hard at this grief.  It is not an easy journey and there are many set backs.  I understand where you are at in your thinking.  Yes, you need to talk about it until you feel like you don't need to.  And, you are coming to terms with grief.  I have found I have these times where I don't know how much I can take.  Eventually the time passes and I feel a little more settled.  The setbacks still get me.

Today is 11 months for me and most days I don't feel like I'm progressing.  I guess it will take as long as it takes.  Take care Finch.  Thinking of you.

[Brad]

2 hours ago, Widowedbysuicide said:

Today is 11 months for me and most days I don't feel like I'm progressing.  I guess it will take as long as it takes.  Take care Finch.  Thinking of you.

Marita - You are progressing; your posts show it.  I found with myself I really had to honestly look at where I was in the beginning, or where I was six months ago.  The changes are so minuscule and so seeming insignificant, but they do add up.  When I look at where I am versus where I want to be I am always disappointed and discouraged.  But when I remember the mess I was in last year at this time versus now I do see change.

[Widowedbysuicide]

Thank you for your kindness Brad.  Wishing you peace and comfort.

[Finch]

Latest thoughts I am having is that the relationship we had was a huge part of each of our lives, but because only we knew about it, it’s in my head and nowhere else.

 

I feel like her family would love to know some of the stories and thoughts I could relate regarding Crystal. Not details about our relationship, not really personal, private things, but just things about her. Things that they won’t know! We shared practically everything. Would lean on each other in moments of need or joy. 

 

It’s unfair on her memory that such a big part of her life is essentially erased.

 

I bet there are things I could tell them that would make them smile or laugh. And yes, cry. 

 

Not everything, not things that were really personal to us. Other things. 

 

The Crystal they are mourning is not 100% of the Crystal that existed. Ok, I get that they are mourning the Crystal they knew, parts of which I was not privy to. But they didn’t know all of her. And she doesn’t deserve to have some of her not remembered by the people that loved her.

 

Ok, an example. Her plans to start her own photography studio. She planned this for a long time, and didn’t tell anyone about that, she wanted to have a plan in place first. But she told me. Wouldn’t her parents like to know that this is something she wanted to do?  

 

Or that she was thinking of seeing a counsellor, a few weeks before she died. That she was putting on a brave face for people but she was struggling to be, as she put it, a 'Pollyanna'.

 

Or that her favourite painting was A Starry Night by Van Gogh. Who knows about this other than me? Her friends? Her husband? I don’t know! That’s half the problem. I don’t know how much of her is being remembered. She DOESN’T DESERVE not to be 100% remembered for all parts of her. 

 

The fact she entrusted me with all these things reflects on the connection we had, yes. But I feel like I owe it to her to honour her memory more by sharing these things.

 

Or is what was private and personal between us, supposed to stay that way? 

 

Do I grow old with these things unspoken? Do I reach out to her husband, the only one that did know about me? Or has he by now read all the personal correspondence between me and Crystal and thus resents me more than ever? Do I track down her kids in 10 or 15 years when they are adults and tell them all these amazing things about their mother they never knew? Would they be grateful to learn these things, having lost their mum so early on and having a unique window into how she was via videos she sent me of her playing with them that they may not have seen because she talks to me in the videos and so probably had not shown anyone else? I even have a video of one of them saying hello to me which they probably won’t remember. Does this make me a weirdo? What if this leads them to question their father about me? If I was in her husband’s shoes, how would I feel if someone did that to me. I have had all these thoughts.

[kayc]

1 hour ago, Finch said:

The Crystal they are mourning is not 100% of the Crystal that existed.

That's true for all of us as we mourn someone...we mourn the person we knew, but people are multifaceted and each person who has a relationship with that person experiences a different relationship, knows that person in a unique way only known to them.

Your relationship with Crystal is private to you in the same way my relationship with George was private to me.  I don't need to share all of the parts of George I knew with his family or friends, they are mine to savor, just as your knowing Crystal so fully is yours to savor.

If you're asking my advice, no I would not track down her family and let them know the Crystal you knew.  In a way it might only make them feel sad that they didn't know her more fully, so what purpose would that serve?  It is your own desire to share this with the world, but you have to ask if you are doing it for yourself or for them.  Share your thoughts in a journal.  Are you still seeing a professional grief counselor, have you talked this over with them?

[MartyT]

Finch, my dear, it seems to me that if Crystal wanted her husband and other family members to know all these secret hopes and dreams of hers, she would have told them herself. After all, these were her secrets, hopes and dreams, and they were hers to tell ~ or not. The risk you take of sharing any of this with her family is so high. As you say, what if this leads to more questions? How could you explain your knowledge of all these things? As you describe it, you and Crystal were having a secret, emotional affair. What have you to gain by sharing that secret ~ or even parts of it ~ with her husband and members of her family?

[Margm]

This whole situation hit me personally, I know how much I hurt my family).  In doing so, I hurt myself also.  Billy was the one who died though, but he had forgiven me..  At the end, we had no secrets.  Some of them were hard to tell, took years to tell, and I risked losing him.  I did lose respect and trust.  But, in the end love won out. I am sorry the affairs of the heart did not get to finish with some people who were left wondering.  But in one case there is an immediate family to try to save, in the other, an inquisitive person and two people gone, who were loved by many.  If they had wanted their families to know, they would have told.  I got a chance to and a chance to beg forgiveness.  

You want her family to know the secrets she felt, the plans she was making, unless she was planning on making those changes to her life in your house, please do not add this Crystal that you knew, the Crystal her children did not know, please honor her enough to let her family only know the Crystal they knew. You had many years, they had more. You want to honor the Crystal you knew, write it in a book.  It will not help her family to know she had secrets they knew nothing about.  It will harm the family.  Please do not harm their memories.  I do not think that is your intention.  But, like all of us are having to learn to let go of someone, so is her family.  We have our memories.  They have their memories.  You have your memories.  Keep them as your own. 

[Finch]

Thank you all.

 

Kay... yes, I think in part it would be for myself. In part in search of validation and to share my grief with other people that knew her. I do try and put myself in their shoes and think what it would be like to find out or even hint at that she had this secret life that she told noone about.

I imagine it would be very distressing to them and I very very much do not want to cause them pain. God knows what they are going through. And that's half the problem. I don't know! From hearing about them every day, to nothing. Door slammed shut.

It hurts me alot that I am behind this frosted glass of sorts where the rest of her family and friends can't see me. It's not even frosted, it's like a police lineup mirror where I can look in a bit but they can't see me. As I approach the 1 year from losing her, they all have each other. I still have so many unanswered questions. 

I am still seeing a grief counsellor and he generally advises to accept there are some things I will never get the answer to and that I cannot share in the family's grief. He also says he is concerned primarily about me and that I should do what I need to do to find closure, within reason, and that while I should respect the family, I need to consider what I want. He also talks about how I have no idea what is going through the husband's head or what he thinks of me and what impact my contact might have, much like what negative impact I might have had if I had flown over there in her last week. He thinks at some point I should go to America in a sort of pilgrimage. Not to her house. Just to places she wanted me to visit.

Marg, I appreciate you relating your own experience. Your post was very painful for me to read and I cried because I accept that to a degree you are right and the truth hurts. 

Marty... no, there is no easy way for me to impart what I want to impart to them without them figuring out the obvious. The layers of complexity around it drive me mad sometimes.

It's just so unfair. That all the love and joy we shared - this is what it deserves? To hide in the shadows anonymously, forever? I won't accept that. In the years to come, Crystal and I may have met and she may have ended up telling everyone about me. I'll never know now if that would have happened. 

Yes, the husband does know about me, in fact he's known about me for almost as long as I have known Crystal. They did not love each other in that way and he had accepted my existence of sorts. And he had an actual physical affair during that time! Crystal was very forthright to me in her opinion of him at times. 

Not that he was a villain. He cared about her and when she got cancer, being a doctor there was much more he could do to physically support her than I could from thousands of miles away behind a screen.

By now he must have read every letter between us, and maybe her emails and everything else, everything personal, which makes me feel even more helpless and frustrated and like our relationship has been violated by eyes not meant for it. It was private and special, like you guys say, but he is privy to some of it and that hurts as I have zero control over it. 

What if I approached her friends rather than her family? I just feel desperate to try and re-connect to her life somehow.

One of the last things she said to me was that she was going to hang up a framed poem in her new house, the same one she sent me for Christmas. We would both hang them up. So we would both share that. But it never happened. Where is the framed poem now? Maybe it was thrown away because noone knew what significance it had. Maybe everything I ever sent her has been thrown away or burned. It's these kinds of little things that mean so much, because such things had great significance throughout our relationship. The small things. I hate the thought that they might have been thrown away without a second thought.

I don't know if I could ever write in a journal or book about this. It would just remind me of the tragedy of how it ended and of the unfulfilled promise. I guess I am writing about some of it here as an outlet.

Everything stopped. Suddenly. Everything stopped. 

I'm going off on a tangent and rambling, apologies. I'm probably also repeating things.

 

 

 

[Margm]

1 hour ago, Finch said:

Everything stopped. Suddenly. Everything stopped. 

It did for all of us Finch.  Let Crystal's family grieve the Crystal they knew.  You grieve the Crystal you knew.  If things are thrown away or burned, it is because they have no significance to the family, or the husband wanted them away from his and Crystal's family.  You have no control over any of this.  Please honor Crystal by not conveying Crystal's secret life to her family or friends.  If it was so precious to you, keep it in your heart, or write your book about your Crystal.  You cannot conjure up one atom of the Crystal you knew anymore than I can bring Billy back.  We live with our memories.  If Billy had another life, I do not want to know about it.  I am not curious about it at all.  And, honestly, he would not want me or his children, or his mom or dad if they were alive to know.  If he kept it secret, he had a reason to keep it that way, and it is buried and gone, as surely as is he.   All we have, any of us, are our memories, and let us keep them safe and honored.  

I'm sorry if it made you cry.  The truth hurts.  We cry a lot, all of us.  And, we will cry more, as will you.  But nothing we do, no place we go where they once had been, none of that brings them back.    

 

[Gwenivere]

2 hours ago, Marg M said:

Let Crystal's family grieve the Crystal they knew.  You grieve the Crystal you knew.  If things are thrown away or burned, it is because they have no significance to the family, or the husband wanted them away from his and Crystal's family.  You have no control over any of this.  

Fitch, you do have control over this.   But Marg makes an excellent point.  Weighing your decisions.  My biggest question to myself would be do I have any right to force myself into her family?  From what you described it would be for yourself more than what they want from you.  That has to be respected.  Do you have the right to most possibly add more pain to their mourning?  You can, but is it a fair thing to do to ease yours?  If one of them came to you with questions, that would be very different.  But they haven't.  You had your time with her.  It's done, just like the rest of of here with our loved ones.  I know that sounds harsh, but it is a truth we are all carrying.  Would she have wanted you to possibly cause more pain because of her?  These are rhetorical questions.  Things I feel you should ask yourself.

You had a long distance love affair with a person you never met physically.  It's valid emotionally.  Now you will hopefully add some perspective as that is vital for yourself and them.

[Finch]

 

They can't come to me with questions if they don't know I exist.

But I take your point.

It's not easy to add that perspective. To work out what is the right thing to do balanced against what I feel the need to do and what I think Crystal would have wanted. I'm trying, I really am.

[kayc]

Everything stopped for all of us.  Sure, some people continue to have contact with their loved one's family.  For me, it ended with his death because his family just plain doesn't give a rat's fig about me or care to know me now that he's gone.  It's hard to understand, because I was everything to him, and vice versa, but it's how they are, and I've accepted that.  They had a relationship with him, not with me.
When you have a relationship with a married woman, there's some things you have to accept...that it is compartmentalized, never the twain shall meet.  All of these relationships were part of her, but her world here and her world with you coexisted, and it ended before it could blend.  We'll never know what could have been, but that is true for all of us.  I ask myself, "What if George were still alive today?" but I will never know because that's not what happened.
Respect the other relationships and let them rest in peace...yes, even her friends.  And by the way, I lost all of our friends the day he died.  Apparently they were merely his friends and not ours as I thought.  Or they just couldn't continue with half a couple.  Whatever the reasons, they disappeared on me.  So you really aren't missing out on any more than some of the rest of us.
They aren't going to have questions.  What you "feel the need to do" is for yourself, not necessarily in THEIR best interest.  And not necessarily what Crystal would have wanted.  If she'd wanted her kids and friends to know you, she would have told them long ago.  This desire within you has become like an obsession, but you need to get control over it.  

20 hours ago, Finch said:

I am still seeing a grief counsellor and he generally advises to accept there are some things I will never get the answer to and that I cannot share in the family's grief.

Please listen to this, it is sound advice.
 

[Finch]

1 hour ago, kayc said:

 

Everything stopped for all of us.  Sure, some people continue to have contact with their loved one's family.  For me, it ended with his death because his family just plain doesn't give a rat's fig about me or care to know me now that he's gone.  It's hard to understand, because I was everything to him, and vice versa, but it's how they are, and I've accepted that.  They had a relationship with him, not with me.

 

I'm sorry that you had that experience with George's family. I'm sure by now you know it doesn't diminish the meaningfulness or profundity of what you shared with him, even by 0.00001%.

And as for the 'friends' that you lost - who needs friends like that? Nevertheless, it can only have made things more difficult for you at the time, and I'm sorry.

 

I think it's become an obsession for me because it feels like a tangible a way to reconnect (in a small way) to her/her life, to lessen my pain.... that is just there beyond my grasp. 

Even if it made me feel better, it would likely make them feel worse. But that's why I brought it up here... because I'm fighting myself on this. Struggling to accept that I have to rule this out and be stuck with the what ifs forever.

It's not just a selfish motive though - I genuinely wonder sometimes if I could actually help them. I really WANT to help them. It makes me so sad to think of how they must be suffering. With every anniversary, I think of them too.

I know this sounds insane in some respects when essentially what we had was an extra-marital affair. I know that I am sounding deluded. I can step outside of myself and objectively know this.

She did want her kids to know me. She would chat to me over Skype with them there. I spoke to them. Of course, they were young and to them I was just one of their mom's friends. And now with her gone, other people now have the mantle of taking care of them and deciding things for them.

I just wish we'd talked about it a bit more. The practicalities of if something happened to her. We never got further than her telling me to contact her Dad. Just a week before she died she said I should get in touch with him if I didn't hear from her. So she was definitely ok with me speaking to him. And when she told me that at the time it made me assume he knew about me. But he didn't. So I don't know what she was thinking or what she meant by it. Did she mean 'contact my Dad, but just say you are a friend'? I'm so annoyed at myself that we didn't talk more about it. But neither of us expected everything to happen so quickly. Like many of us here.

 

 

[MartyT]

Finch, you are struggling with the loss of a dream, which is one of the hardest to let go of. In fact, your entire relationship with Crystal was based on a dream, so in a sense you became quite used to holding onto her that way. You've been doing it for years. With her death, you are faced with the reality that your dream (of being together one day) will never come to be. Holding on to the notion of contacting someone in her family or hoping that one of them will contact you is just another way for you to hold onto Crystal. Unless and until you find a way to lay Crystal to rest (in your heart, in your mind, "in the tabernacle of your very own soul") you will stay where you are now. If you've become so attached to living in this dream, and if you insist on staying there, you'll never learn how to live your life in the real world. What a waste that would be ~ and that is something none of us wants for you. You deserve so much more than that.  

[Widowedbysuicide]

Finch please continue to come here to work through your thoughts.  There have been several very sound suggestions here and you are an intelligent man so I believe this process works well for you.  It's a safe and sensible way of talking through it.

Take care friend.

[Finch]

On 12/12/2016 at 3:27 PM, MartyT said:

Finch, you are struggling with the loss of a dream, which is one of the hardest to let go of. In fact, your entire relationship with Crystal was based on a dream, so in a sense you became quite used to holding onto her that way. You've been doing it for years. With her death, you are faced with the reality that your dream (of being together one day) will never come to be. Holding on to the notion of contacting someone in her family or hoping that one of them will contact you is just another way for you to hold onto Crystal. Unless and until you find a way to lay Crystal to rest (in your heart, in your mind, "in the tabernacle of your very own soul") you will stay where you are now. If you've become so attached to living in this dream, and if you insist on staying there, you'll never learn how to live your life in the real world. What a waste that would be ~ and that is something none of us wants for you. You deserve so much more than that.  

I don't know how to relieve the regret I have for not making that dream come true sooner. I haven't yet found a way to. 

I know it's no good to use hindsight and that you do what you do at the time. And I can tell myself that she was ok with not meeting, and that we were making progress and that  we made each other happy every day. I have so much evidence of this in her written word and it should be something to celebrate, that I made her feel loved and wanted. But she is gone and I am left here, alone, with these thoughts.

I can't find peace with the fact that I will never meet her now. Never hold her hand. I'll never ever know what it would have been like and it makes me feel like I want to die because I could have made it happen. It was in my power. I hate myself for being the way I am, having all these anxieities and for being too afraid.

I'm so lonely without her. 

The thought of ever managing to meet someone else in the future makes me feel horrible guilt. I feel alot of pressure on me from family to meet someone and have kids etc. I did want to have kids one day. And if it wasn't with her than I thought she would at least be here to watch them grow up, like I watched her kids grow up. It all feels too much to think about.

 

 

[Widowedbysuicide]

Finch if you were not the person you are with all your good points and with your class you might never have even met Crystal on the internet.  She felt love for you as she knew you and you loved her as you knew her.  If we could go back in time to have a do-over there is no guarantee it would work out any differently.

The what if and the if only thoughts are torture I know.  The suggestion of starting a new relationship is not appealing to me, yet that is what I wanted my husband to do as I was convinced I would go first.  I know that I cannot live alone for the rest of my life, I would either and die on my own.  At some point I might meet someone who I care for and who cares for me.  Then I will have to make a decision.  I don't believe that this would be disrespectful to my husband.  Until then my Gord is my husband.  He will always be in my heart and in my life.  He lives on as he is within our son.

Take care of yourself my friend.  

[kayc]

We all are left alone without them and none of us can know what could have been if...
You have the regret of not having gotten to meet in person.  I understand that continues to haunt you, yet you did connect and there were reasons you didn't meet...she had a family, perhaps that complicated things, but you do know that you helped each other through your day/s and cared about each other.  
Try not to worry about having kids and all of the tomorrows, you've enough to deal with right now just getting through today.  If you meet someone you will know it, time enough for that concern. There's no reason to feel guilty if you meet someone, that's just another part of grief to work through.  We sure can lay a lot on ourselves! 

[Numb and Lost]

On 12/12/2016 at 0:57 AM, Finch said:

 

They can't come to me with questions if they don't know I exist.

But I take your point.

It's not easy to add that perspective. To work out what is the right thing to do balanced against what I feel the need to do and what I think Crystal would have wanted. I'm trying, I really am.

Hi, KayC actually directed me to this forum from another one as I am in a somewhat similar situation as you. I've read your posts and am battling that urge to contact family. I am married and he was married as well. I love him very much. I can't say it in the past tense form "loved" because I still love him even though he is gone. He was killed a month ago in an accident. He was 34. We hadn't seen each other in a while and had been trying to get together. Every time I ever saw him it was in a place I didn't feel comfortable or felt paranoid. So we talked a lot about this day we planned to see each other where I could feel comfortable. I planned to say things I needed to say then, but that day never came. He text me and I was unable to respond dealing with problems at home. I was going to call him after the weekend but instead I opened up my Facebook to see that he was gone. I had a dream a few months or so before that I saw he died on Facebook the exact way I did when it really happened. At that time I was so relieved it was a dream and I thought that is one thing I couldn't handle. Now it's my reality. I have no connection to him at all now. I have nothing of his. I have a screenshot of a text, his Facebook pictures, and a bag of dirt from his grave because I just needed something. I look at his family's fb page and see how they are grieving and I feel what they feel. It is so hard not having anyone to cry with that loved him too. I of course would never contact his wife or want her to know but I have wanted to contact his sister. They were close and just by reading things she posts I feel like she would understand. But I can't do that because I don't know that for sure and it's a risk.  Also I feel like if he wanted her to know he would have told her.  Of course he didn't think this would happen and I would be hurting the way I am. I just have this need for something. I feel like there is something I could or should do. He didn't want to break up his family and although I didn't want to break up mine I loved him so much I can't say what might have happened in the future. But we didn't talk about feelings a lot. I never told him exactly how I felt about him. I'm pretty sure he knew though. He never told me either but I know how he looked at me, and it was the same way I looked at him. Part of me is searching for validation and part of me wants to grieve with someone who loves him too. I feel like he probably told someone but I have no way to know who. I am struggling with all this but at the end of the day I know it's just me holding on to him any way that I can. I don't feel like I can go on. The pain is just too much. 

[kayc]

Numb and Lost,

Welcome to this site.  Others should be along shortly.  You have complicated grief, being unable to openly love and grieve, and that is so much harder.  

[Numb and Lost]

1 hour ago, kayc said:

Numb and Lost,

Welcome to this site.  Others should be along shortly.  You have complicated grief, being unable to openly love and grieve, and that is so much harder.  

Thank you. I feel like I absolutely can't make it today. It just gets harder instead of easier. I'm in the bathroom pretending to take a shower so really I can sit in here and cry. I'm just having a total breakdown today. I just don't know how to just go on living my life like he was never here. I look at that screenshot of a text between us just to remember he was. It just hurts so bad I still don't feel like it can be real. I am just sitting here shaking and there is no amount of counseling or medication that could fix it. I see how everyone hurts for his family and I wonder but who hurts for me? I'm just no one sitting here with nothing but a bag of dirt to comfort myself. One friend encouraged me to contact his mother as she said a mother would want to know anything about her son and would want any opportunity to talk about him. While I'm not going to do that because I have no way of knowing how she would take it, as a mother of a son myself, I would want someone to contact me. I would never want anyone my son loved in any way to hurt like this alone, and I would want to talk about him to anyone that wanted to talk about him also. I just can't believe it's true that I will never see him in this life again or be able to say what I want to say. Yesterday I keep having this conversation come back about when his child got older and it just makes me sick because he will never see that. I imagine how devestated he would have been if he had known he was going to die right before Christmas. I don't know how to go on and lead even a semblance of a normal life. I look at my clothes in my closet and I don't want to wear some of them because I remember wearing them with him, or even talking to him while wearing them. I used to care so much about what I looked like and now I feel like it doesn't matter because he isn't here to see me anyway. I used to workout all the time to the point of obsession and now I feel like I don't want to it will just keep me healthy longer. I know I'm going on and on and on but I'm just so alone and it hurts so much. 

[Margm]

Welcome the numb.  I called it my numbing down.  Now after 17 months, I cannot do it.

After 17 months I have some periods of almost happiness.  I feel too guilty to be happy.  I think that goes with all of us.  We were happy with our mate but we have lost a whole half side of our body and we tend to flop along.  You think you cannot enjoy things because your mate cannot enjoy them with you.  If you have other people, family, in your life you will have to try to help take care of them, but you really do have to take care of yourself first.

After living with Billy nearly 55 years my first impulse was to follow him, and I did not mind doing that at all.  I did not want to live without him.  I tried grief group, (This is the only place that I found that addresses our grief). We lived for and took care of family during all that time and I have a hard time listening to music.  I turned politics off TV earlier to music.  Turned to easy listening music.  They just played "A Time for Us" from West Side Story  and that is what we thought.  Eventually there will be "a time for us" but there never was.  I get bitter sometimes.  We fitted into those years a bunch of things we wanted to do, so I will give up on that sadness.  We have to take care of  ourselves, but in my case, I also have to take care of family and sometimes (other than my teenage granddaughter), I have to just ignore family.  

I cannot say it gets "easier" cause there is nothing easy about it.  I will say things get different, and the definition of that has to come from you.  I cannot tell you what my different is.  Sometimes I do not even notice seasons have changed.  I will say, somehow we do manage to flop along.  I don't know how that saying goes, two steps forward, fall back one.  Just keep reading.  You will recognize your feelings somewhere in this forum and you  will see how we all feel at different times.  We are all from different backgrounds, different parts of the country, but grief is a common denominator.  

[Finch]

1 hour ago, Numb and Lost said:

Thank you. I feel like I absolutely can't make it today. It just gets harder instead of easier. I'm in the bathroom pretending to take a shower so really I can sit in here and cry. I'm just having a total breakdown today. I just don't know how to just go on living my life like he was never here. I look at that screenshot of a text between us just to remember he was. It just hurts so bad I still don't feel like it can be real. I am just sitting here shaking and there is no amount of counseling or medication that could fix it. I see how everyone hurts for his family and I wonder but who hurts for me? I'm just no one sitting here with nothing but a bag of dirt to comfort myself. One friend encouraged me to contact his mother as she said a mother would want to know anything about her son and would want any opportunity to talk about him. While I'm not going to do that because I have no way of knowing how she would take it, as a mother of a son myself, I would want someone to contact me. I would never want anyone my son loved in any way to hurt like this alone, and I would want to talk about him to anyone that wanted to talk about him also. I just can't believe it's true that I will never see him in this life again or be able to say what I want to say. Yesterday I keep having this conversation come back about when his child got older and it just makes me sick because he will never see that. I imagine how devestated he would have been if he had known he was going to die right before Christmas. I don't know how to go on and lead even a semblance of a normal life. I look at my clothes in my closet and I don't want to wear some of them because I remember wearing them with him, or even talking to him while wearing them. I used to care so much about what I looked like and now I feel like it doesn't matter because he isn't here to see me anyway. I used to workout all the time to the point of obsession and now I feel like I don't want to it will just keep me healthy longer. I know I'm going on and on and on but I'm just so alone and it hurts so much. 

Hi,

I was reading your posts and nearly everything you said with what you have been through in the last month, I can relate to in some way. I'm so very sorry for how much this hurts and how complicated the situation is. The feelings and emotions you are experiencing, I experienced similar, and still experience. If you've read my posts in this thread then you might recognise this? I know how you feel when you ask 'who hurts for me?' To their family, you don't exist. You are invisible, a ghost. To most of Crystal's family and friends, I don't exist and I now have no connection to the things in her life bar looking from afar on Facebook and brief contact with one of her friends (and 1 very cautious message to her father). They grieve together, we grieve in isolation. They don't know how significant we were in their lives. How much we meant to them and they to us. It's not fair that what we had or what we hoped to have in the future isn't validated by others. I too often think - wouldn't Crystal's parents be upset to know there is someone hurting so much over their daughter? So much profound hurt, like them? But then I measure that against the fact that the Crystal I loved was different to the Crystal they loved. And she didn't tell them about me, so I should respect that and not risk causing them pain. It's so tough to navigate and to consider their feelings when our pain feels literally unbearable. So complicated and difficult to know what is the right thing to do and to this day I go back and forth on it. I have discussed it many times on here and with my grief counselor and with friends. I don't know if I can offer you effective advice. I am still finding my way but I do want you to know that you are not alone and I will listen to whatever you want to talk through, and everyone else here will listen.

The contacts I have made so far have been very cautious, as I said. I don't know if I will make any more. I would probably recommend that you let some time pass first before acting on any decision to contact. Let your head and heart be in a better place so that your judgement is clearer and you can more objectively weigh up the pros and cons, and they whys of doing it.

Does anyone in your life know what you are going through? Does your husband know? Any friends you can talk to who might support you?

Finch